Granular vs. Liquid Fertilizer- When Should You Use Each..

Now some might ask well, could I use a liquid organic fertilizer and accomplish the same thing? What's up Lazy Dog Fam? Hope all y'all are having an awesome day. It is Sunday September 13th here in South Georgia and today we're going to be getting some of our raised beds behind me here prepped for fall planting that we're planning on doing within the next week as we're expecting some cooler temps and a big part of that raised bed prep is putting down some pre-plant fertilizer. This is something we preach a lot on this channel because it's a really, really good practice to have establishing a nutrient base there for those seedlings when they emerge. But what's the best pre-plant fertilizer to use? Do we want to use something granular? Do we want to go with liquid? What type of analysis are we looking for as far as the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium? That's what we're going to be talking about today while we use granular fertilizer in certain applications or certain situations and use liquid in others. So here's the beds that we're going to be planting within the next week or so. These four round raised beds here. Now the first step in getting some beds ready for fall planting would be to clean out the beds. Obviously we've already done that here. We cleaned out these beds, had a few weeds to pull. We also topped them off with soil. So we add a little more soil there. Not all the way to the top of these beds but close. Now as I alluded to earlier we're big, big believers in using a pre-plant fertilizer. Putting down some fertilizer before or at planting to establish a good nutrient base so when those seedlings do get going they've got access to the nutrients they need. Now in our in-ground garden plots we usually put down that fertilizer in the furrow when we plant. We don't put it down ahead of time but in the raised beds since they are kind of confined spaces there it's a little easier to do. A lot of times we'll put down that pre-plant fertilizer a week you know three or four days before we plant. So with this pre-plant fertilizer we're not trying to give these plants everything they're going to need for the duration of the grow out. Now for some really fast growing crops like lettuce sometimes that pre-plant fertilizer is all they need to go the distance but for most things we're still going to have to feed them a little bit as they grow. We just want to establish a nice base there in the beginning. Furthermore when we put down this pre-plant fertilizer we're not trying to get the soil really hot or really loaded up with nutrients because seeds don't need nutrients to germinate. We don't need a ton of readily available nutrients in the bed. We want a nice slow release of nutrients that can become available to those seedlings as they need it. So that's why I like a granular organic fertilizer as a pre-plant fertilizer. It slowly breaks down. It's slowly available to those seedlings to those plants as they grow and need it. The timing works out perfectly. Now some might ask well could I use a liquid organic fertilizer and accomplish the same thing? Do I really need to have a granular organic fertilizer on hand? What if I mostly use liquid organic fertilizers? Can I use that as a pre-plant as well? So for example could we use something like this right here this Agri-Thrive this liquid organic fertilizer to establish a nice pre-plant base of nutrients in those raised beds. And when you're using a liquid fertilizer like this in a pre-plant situation that's usually referred to as a soil drench. So you're mixing up some of this stuff with water and basically drenching your soil with it. So yes you could use a liquid pre-plant fertilizer as opposed to a granular pre-plant fertilizer but my concern particularly in these raised beds here has to do with solubility. So that liquid fertilizer is soluble. It's already in liquid form. The granular fertilizer is not soluble. It has to get some rain or some overhead water and that's what helps those little pellets to start to break down and then the microbes in the soil can break them down further and make those nutrients available to the plants. Now in an in-ground situation this may not be as big of an issue but in a raised bed situation if we pour a lot of liquid soluble fertilizer on that soil as a soil drench a week or so prior to planting my concern is that if we get some heavy rains it's going to flush a lot of that out of there because we're putting a soluble fertilizer on there. However if we put the granular fertilizer on there since it's much much slower has a much slower breakdown we're not worried about it washing through near as fast as the liquid fertilizer. So that's why I prefer to use a granular pre-plant. I don't have to worry about it flushing out of there if we get a lot of rain at one time. Okay so I made the case as to why I prefer a granular fertilizer over a liquid fertilizer in a pre-plant situation. Now let's talk about different granular fertilizers that you could use for this. Now over the last few years we've used a lot of this Coop Grow organic fertilizer right here and I don't have a bag in front of me I think this is a 3-3-4 analysis and this stuff worked very very well for us for as long as we've used it. However unfortunately Coop Grow is no longer producing this product right here so we're not going to be able to use this anymore we're going to have to use something else. So we're going to go back to using something we used before the Coop Grow came around and that's this NatureSafe 8-5-5 here. See these little pellets there really easy to sprinkle don't really have an odor to them. I've used this a lot in the past we just went to the Coop Grow for the last few years because I had a friend that lived not too far from here that was making that product and it was a really good product and we liked using it but since that's no longer being produced we'll go back to this stuff here. Now the important thing to emphasize here is to not get too hung up on the numbers when we say a balanced pre-plant fertilizer we're really meaning relatively balanced we don't need all three of those numbers to be exactly the same we just want them kind of close. So this NatureSafe blend here is an 8-5-5 obviously it's got more nitrogen than it has phosphorus or potassium but those numbers are close enough for us to call this a relatively balanced fertilizer. Now this stuff here isn't really easy to find at the retail level if you're in South Georgia go to the big city of Cairo Georgia there's a company over there called Graco Fertilizer that carries it that's where I got mine but most people aren't going to be able to find this stuff here so I figured I'd mention a few other good options out there. So Espoma also makes a nice balanced pre-plant fertilizer I think they've got one called Garden Tone that's 3-4-4 and then one called Plant Tone that's 5-3-3 either of those would be good options. Dr. Earth also makes a good pre-plant fertilizer I think they've got one that's 4-4-4 which would be perfect for you know doing some pre-plant fertilization on some raised beds. There's also a couple products called Harmony and Symphony I think they're made by the same company they're just kind of two slight variations of the same thing it's a pelletized chicken manure much like the Coop Grow was I've used it also in the past it's been quite a while it's a really good product as well not sure it's available in smaller bags though it may be only available in 50 pound bags online which usually means the shipping is quite cost but that gives you an idea of some of the options out there this isn't the only option out there but I can drive 30 minutes and get this pretty affordably so that's what I use. Now I don't usually measure exactly how much I'm using on each bed but you can see how much I've got there and I'll show you how much I've got left in a minute and you kind of get an idea I just kind of go by feel I've done this so much I'm just looking for a good coverage there with this stuff I don't need to cover the bed completely with it just a nice light sprinkle about like that should be good so you can see there how much is left we started with about that much and we have about that much this is a half gallon pitcher and now all we want to do is just kind of incorporate it in the soil a little bit the soil is pretty moist since we got a good rain yesterday I think we may get a little more rain later this afternoon if we weren't getting any rain for a while I would take my water hose and kind of soak it in a good bit but I think we're gonna get some help from the sky here later this afternoon all we need to do is just mix it in a little bit there and then try to level it out there and that should be good now back to the liquid versus granular comparison we did earlier if we were doing what I just did there with a liquid fertilizer pouring it on the soil it would be much more difficult to get a nice even application but we're going to use liquid we probably want to mix that up in a pulp sprayer and spray it over the area to get some nice coverage be kind of hard to get good coverage just pouring it out of a pitcher like this so in my opinion the granular fertilizer is a better tool for prepping these beds but the liquid fertilizer is going to be a better tool once these plants get up and going because like I mentioned earlier this stuff right here is soluble so if we've got roots present there we've got roots that can soak up this stuff really fast if we've got plants established and growing and we put granular around them we've got to wait on that stuff to break down to become soluble before the plants can access now that doesn't mean I don't side dress with granular fertilizer sometimes I will do that occasionally but to make this distinction here on when I think it's most appropriate you use granular versus liquid I think the granular works great as a pre-plant I think the liquid works great to feed the plants as they grow because they can access this stuff much faster so the granular fertilizer builds the base and then the liquid fertilizer lets us kind of steer the crop it's not like one is better than the other and I'm not saying that you need both but if you're going to use both kind of understand that each has its place so the granular fertilizer we use more for base feeding establishing a good nutrient base in those beds and then the liquid fertilizer we use more for spoon feeding feeding those plants as they grow we're not giving them a whole lot at one time we're just giving them a little bit every couple weeks to keep them nice and happy so we've got two different tools there that we use for different situations when we need a nice slow breakdown something that's not going to wash out quickly the granular is the way to go but when we need a faster response when we've got roots present to take up that soluble fertilizer that's when we'll go with the liquid so the granular is slow and steady when we need it to be and then the liquid gives us some nice speed and control that we need once we have growing plants now a couple caveats to all this I just mentioned if you were to get a soil test and find out that your soil was really high in phosphorus or potassium or both of those you may want to use something besides a balanced fertilizer but if I were to create kind of a one-size-fits-all plan usually that balanced fertilizer works pretty good for everyone but if you're concerned always get a soil test and check your nutrient levels before going forward and then lastly important to note that your plants may or may not need some of that successive spoon feeding I think it's always a good idea to put down some pre-plant fertilizer regardless of your soil situation but how much you feed after that will depend on the health of your soil the biology of your soil lots of things so hopefully that helps you understand why we use granular fertilizer in some situations and liquid fertilizer in other situations and let me know in the comments below do you use both liquid and granular or do you just stick to one type and if you feel like you're running a little bit behind on your fall garden preparations watch this video right here where we'll break down a nice little timeline of when you should be aiming to plant certain things based on the soil temp and the weather in your area so check that out we'll see you next time right here at Lazy Dog Farm.